For a child to be sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole is almost to give that child the death penalty, a punishment that was outlawed in Roper v. 2005 Simmons. In the Roper case Christopher Simmons challenged his death sentence for murder at age 17 because of his claim that he was an "immature and irresponsible minor." The Supreme Court overturned his ruling, saying there was a national consensus against the death penalty for juveniles because many states had rejected it as a viable form of punishment. A sentence of life imprisonment without parole is equivalent to the death penalty for a minor because the child has some hope of living a semi-normal life ending at a young age, in this case 14 years old. If this were your child, would you want them to stay in prison for the rest of their lives, with no hope and no reason to live? Or would you like them, even if it was an incredibly long sentence, to have at least a glimmer of hope that maybe one day they will be able to escape the frozen hell of the prison walls and feel the sun on their face once again? When a life sentence with parole is given, it is not a guarantee that the person will be released, but simply gives him or her a glimmer of hope and a reason to